Hurricane damage survey likely to help worldwide

Destroyed: The remains of a church after hurricane-driven floods and debris flows at Castle Comfort, Dominica (photo, Richard Teeuw)

The biggest natural disaster to ever hit the Caribbean island of Dominica is now likely to provide guidelines for reducing the risk globally of disaster from hurricanes.

Scientists led by disaster expert Dr Richard Teeuw, of the University of Portsmouth, are surveying the damage to Dominica’s landscape, infrastructure and communities following the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Dominica was devastated by the hurricane last September which left 68 people dead or missing. The hurricane registered as Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with maximum wind speeds of 260 km/h.

The remains of a concrete house destroyed by large trees and boulders during the hurricane-driven floods, Point Michel, Dominica, where the most fatalities were recorded (photo, Richard Teeuw)

The results of the surveys will provide guidelines for reducing vulnerability and exposure to hurricane-driven floods.

Global warming is expected to bring a steady rise in the number of hurricanes and an increase in their intensity.

The scientists are calling for urgent climate change adaptation strategies, particularly in small island developing states with limited financial resources.

Dr Teeuw said: “It’s vital we better understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of the built environment, especially critical pieces of infrastructure, and examine ways of increasing the resilience of affected communities. All the evidence points towards global warming bringing a greater number of the largest (Category 5) hurricanes.

Drone pilot Toby Meredith (right) and his ‘spotter’, Paul Weber, during the aerial photography surveys of one of the sites destroyed by the hurricane debris flows (photo, Richard Teeuw)

“The destruction hurricanes bring isn’t just caused by extreme winds, they also bring high amounts of rain which then cause soil erosion and flood, with boulders and fallen trees and floods forming destructive debris flows – entire houses have been swept away, even some with reinforced concrete walls.”

The project involves a multi-disciplinary team of geoscientists, engineers and community resilience specialists, with drones capturing photographs of survey sites.

Working alongside the damage survey team, Dr Carmen Solana of the University of Portsmouth and an expert in communicating the risk of damage from natural disasters, is studying the coping strategies and resilience of hurricane-hit communities.

The hurricane destroyed the roofs of 98 per cent of the buildings and the structural frames of half of the island’s houses. In the immediate aftermath, electricity was cut and communications were down, many bridges were damaged and water supplies were disrupted by erosion and breakage of pipes. In terms of structural engineering, the hurricane’s effects on the built environment are among the worst reported ever worldwide from hurricanes.

The field survey will document the geomorphological processes and their interactions, as well as damage to the built environment resulting from those processes in order to investigate damage mechanisms and building fragilities. The findings are likely to be very useful for Dominica’s plans to “Build back better”.

Survey target areas were selected after post-hurricane damage mapping, carried out using remotely sensed imagery from aircraft and Earth observation satellites, via volunteer crowdsource ‘mapathon’ events in the Caribbean and at the University of Portsmouth.

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Hassan will be attending a ‘Hackathon’ this weekend in London, and will be receiving support and mentorship from industry leading experts to help develop his ideas. The best ideas will be selected to present to a panel of judges at the Cabinet Office in March, for the chance to win further funding and support to start putting ideas in to practice.

Grant will shed light on complex geologyFebruary 2

Geologist Dr Catherine Mottram, of the University of Portsmouth, has won NERC funding to join a large geological study on Canada’s Arctic west coast.

The west coast of North America has witnessed a complex series of geological events as many fragments of the earth’s crust have smashed into the continent over the last 300 million years. Faults accommodate movement during tectonic plate collision and host many gold deposits.

Catherine and colleagues will survey and collect samples from key faults of economic importance in the Whitehorse area of the Yukon Territories as part of the Geological Survey of Canada’s £115m Geomapping for Energy and Minerals programme. The scientists will need to use helicopters to reach inaccessible study sites in the mountains, where they expect to also encounter bears.

Catherine will bring back samples from Canada to the cutting-edge laboratory facilities at the University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences to date the exact timing of fault movement on these important gold-bearing faults. The results are expected to shed light on the larger history of plate movement in the Yukon from the Jurassic to recent times.

Dr Mottram’s research focuses on using geochronology, geochemistry, structural geology, petrology, and metamorphic geology to quantify the timing, rates and nature of deformation from the micron- to mountain belt- scale.